Power Tends To Corrupt: Lord Acton's Study of Liberty

9—Acton’s Ideal Polity and Its Alternatives

NINE acton’s ideal Polity and its alternatives The French set about making a new world, as it ought to be, while the anglo-saxons tinkered the old, and made the best of it. exile is the nursery of nationality, as oppression is the school of liberalism. state absolutism, not royal absolutism, is the modern danger against which neither representative government nor democracy can defend us, and which revolution greatly aggravates. if we do not bear this in mind, we shall be led constantly astray by forms to overlook the substance, to confound freedom of speech with freedom of action, to think that right is safer against majorities than against tyrants.1 a C t o N N e v e r W r o t e a separate essay on his ideal polity, the best practical regime that would meet most, if not all, of his requirements. however, he left many scattered remarks on the merits and defects of past and present political communities. in searching for his ideal, we can draw on the vast materials already cited in this book, beginning with his inquiry into the ancient Jews and Greeks, paying special heed to his evaluation of england and america, and ending with his examination of the French revolution. in our re-creating acton’s best practical regime, his opinions on events that he could personally observe and witness are extremely valuable, in particular his reaction to the unification of italy. his seminal essay on nationalism, titled “Nationality,” plays a crucial role in our study, as C h a P t e r 228 PoWer teNDs to CorrUPt he contrasts and compares good and bad regimes, which he identifies with the terms “national liberty” and “national unity,” respectively. “Nationality” and his essays and reports on italy are also essential in clarifying acton’s position on liberalism: they help to reconcile his contradictory statements and pinpoint the kind of liberalism that he professed and identified with as opposed to the other versions, which he detested. The Western world in the nineteenth century was clearly dominated by liberalism and nationalism, and acton, commenting on contemporary events, devoted most of his attention to analyzing these two predominant trends and interpreting their meaning for liberty. he wrote very little, nearly nothing, on the third, nascent trend, which was destined to dominate most of the twentieth century—the trend toward socialism and communism. insofar as possible, we will now try to gather and analyze these rare observations and remarks. in turn, democracy and his critique of it constituted acton’s perennial topic, present in almost everything he wrote. The section on democracy in this chapter will briefly review what has been written on it in this book so far and reexamine the question of acton’s attitude toward democracy and his perspective on the relation between democracy and liberty. Doctrinaire (Continental) Liberalism versus actonian (anglo-american) Liberalism For acton, liberalism is much more than a mere political theory. it is nearly a religion, which he professes with the ardor of a devout believer. of course, his liberalism differs from—or more appropriately, transcends—the political ideals of the theory that was labeled liberalism in his time. Liberalism, for him, corresponds to everything in human history that was noble or that advanced the cause of liberty: “i carried farther than others the Doctrinaire belief in mere Liberalism, identifying it altogether with morality, and holding the ethical standard and purpose to be supreme and sovereign.” Liberty, in turn, is a providential idea for him, foreordained to grow and mature in history, and those who tended its growth were fulfilling the divine will and were liberals. We could risk a statement that, according to acton, liberalism in the larger sense goes back to antiquity and continues throughout history on its mission, which has three basic aspects: first, liberating humankind from all forms of dependence, oppression, and ignorance; second, building political conditions favorable for freedom of conscience and supportive of self-governing communities; and third, promoting civilization and progress Acton’s Ideal Polity and Its Alternatives 229 in general.2 in the past—late antiquity and the Middle ages—Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, was in the mainstream of this liberating process, and this explains acton’s zeal (which he originally displayed upon returning from abroad in 1854) for erasing the anti-Catholic bias in england and reconciling the Church’s teaching with modern liberalism...